Whitford v. Gill
| Gill v. Whitford | |
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| Full case name | Beverly R. Gill, et al. v. William Whitford, et al. |
| Docket nos. | 16-1161 |
| Prior history | On appeal of Whitford v. Gill in United States District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin, No. 15-cv-421 (W.D. Wis. 2017) |
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Gill v. Whitford is a Supreme Court of the United States court case regarding whether a voter redistricting plan created in 2011 for the State of Wisconsin used partisan gerrymandering. The Supreme Court case comes from an appeal made by the State of Wisconsin, challenging the decision of the District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin's ruling that the 2011 redistricting plan was unconstitutional.
While the Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that redistricting that discriminates on racial or ethnicity grounds is unconstitutional, the Court has been reluctant to issue a similarly strong ruling for partisan redistricting. The Court has ruled that excessive partisan gerrymandering violates the Constitution. However, the ruling has yet to adopt a standard for determining partisan gerrymandering in redistricting—with proposed tests being too ambiguous to apply by the courts. In the decision for the 2004 case Vieth v. Jubelirer, which ruled that perceived partisan gerrymandering in Pennsylvania was not unconstitutional, the nine Justices were split. The four Justices in the plurality believed it was impossible to define a standard to judge partisan gerrymandering, while four others could not agree on an existing standard to be used. Justice Anthony Kennedy, in his concurrence with the plurality, believed that some manageable standard for determining partisan gerrymandering could be developed, and challenged lower courts to help identify this standard.
In 2011, Republican legislators in Wisconsin redrew the state Assembly districts based on the latest 2010 census data. The 2011 mapmakers developed a model for evaluating voter partisan preferences in aggregate, and drew up spreadsheets identifying the likely winner in various proposed districts labelling potential maps with “assertive” or “aggressive,” indicating how likely that map was to elect Republicans. They also collaborated with a political science professor that said of the final maps, "that Republicans would maintain a majority under any likely voting scenario". Under the “final map,” mapmakers determined that “Republicans could expect to win 59 Assembly seats, with 38 safe Republican seats, 14 leaning Republican, 10 swing, 4 leaning Democratic, and 33 safe Democratic seats.” The new redisticting map was approved by the State as Act 43, in August 2011. Reflecting this, in the 2012 elections, the Republicans gained 60 percent of the seats in the State Assembly, despite receiving only 49 percent of the statewide vote in 2012.
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